The Fordham Foundation’s Checker Finn is a longtime proponent of national standards, but he sounds a strong cautionary note in the latest Education Gadfly. “Evidence is mounting that those who take curricular content seriously may not like what we find at the end of this road,” Finn writes, ”and I worry that America could be headed toward another painful bout of curriculum warfare.”
Checker details seven worries. He’s suspicious that unions, especially the NEA, are getting on board the bandwagon and the conflation of academic standards with “21st Century Skills.” He also frets that if common standards is limited to English and math, “it may further narrow what’s seriously taught in school–with a malign effect on states that have a decently rounded curriculum that gives due weight to science, history, even art.” His biggest concern is what he calls institutional instability.
The United States of America in 2009 lacks a suitable place to house national standards and tests over the long haul. Who will “own” them? Who will be responsible for revising them? Correcting their errors? Ensuring that assessment results are reported in timely fashion? Nobody wants the Education Department to do this. There’s reason to keep it separate from the National Assessment of Educational Progress and its governing board. Yet the awkward ad hoc “partnership” now assembling to pursue this process could fall apart tomorrow if key individuals retire, die or defect, if election results change the make up of participating organizations, if the money runs out, or if their working draft runs into political headwinds like the “voluntary national standards” of the early 90s. This is no way to run something as important as national academic standards for a big modern country.
Can this idea be salvaged? Yes, if we can figure out how. “Use available tools and models to simplify and expedite this process,” Finn argues. “The U.S. doesn’t need to start from scratch. Several states have fine standards.But don’t pretend to prescribe the whole curriculum….A common standard is the skeleton of learning, not all the flesh. It outlines the core skills and knowledge that young Americans need to acquire and should be accompanied by a reasonable assessment system to determine, at various grade levels, how well they’ve learned those things.”
Well, gosh. I totally agree with Checker on this one. (Did I just type that sentence?)
I don’t think anyone–from any perspective–is going to like what they find at the end of the National Standards road. It seems like a feel-good project, something we can wrap our brains around, and get busy on, right now. Whether it’s the right project to get us where we want to go has been overlooked as the bandwagon fills up.
Three other points of agreement: #1) some states have carefully and incrementally built good, productive standards and aligned assessments. Why not push lagging states toward those models, or encourage consortia of states with similar needs to pool resources–something that’s already reality–rather than trying to get 50 very different states, with different populations, toward uniformity? #2) What is mandated through standards and assessments is what will be taught–and the rest will be seen as optional, except in places where there are abundant resources. Wrong direction to be going, when our greatest national educational threat is the huge and increasing gap. #3) If National Standards come to pass, think “broad concepts,” rather than hundreds of detailed items–the skeleton and not the flesh. But, like Checker, I have little confidence that anyone, especially the USDOE, would be thinking in those terms.
Robert,
Checker Finn is absolutely correct when he expresses his concern over the NEA jumping on the bandwagon for national standards (laced with 21st century skills, I’m sure). Beware of the wolf in sheep’s clothing on this one. The NEA wants NOTHING to do with genuine accountability. They have fought it kicking and screaming every step of the way since a Nation At Risk a quarter of a century ago.
If they’ve suddenly changed their thinking, I apologize for this diatribe. However I would not hold my breath on the NEA changing their ways anytime soon. If anything they’re more likely to dig in farther simply to prove how omnipotent they are to the rest educational establishment.
Somebody refresh my memory. The U.S. History Standards were repudiated, as I recall, by the Senate by 90 something to 0. Yet, those Standards were outstanding. Of course, the politicians complained that they short-changed our heroes. But the strenght of Standards is giving leverage to prioritize and not attempt to cover too much.
I don’t care if the Standards are perfect; after all they never were my priority. But I’d work hard in support of them as a part of a broader compromise, especially along the lines of establishing high-quality assessments for diagnostic and comparisons purposes. After all, we need to get compromises behind us, so we can properly use the Stimulus money. And even though I can work with Finn on this (and many other) issue, he doesn’t sound like he really wants the assistance of teachers. So, on this one, am I in a position similar to CK bloggers who are suspicious of 21st century standards?
Nancy, I can’t believe I’m quoting Reagan, but we must “trust but verify.” On the other hand, I don’t see all of our differences on Standards and curriculum and subject matter as being a top issue. To me, the top issues are the test-driven accountability and recognizing that we need community schools. (I would not be such a big opponent of NCLB if I didn’t teach in a hardcore school and witnessed the harm its accountability inflicted on the students it was designed to help. Life is too short to concentrate on opposing anything too much unless you believe there is a moral imperative) But of course, my big concern is inner city schools, and I would have a different perspective, perhaps, if I taught in a suburban or magnet school.
John, not sure what I’m supposed to be trusting and/or verifying. I don’t often agree with Checker Finn, but I agree with his reservations about starting over to write (involuntary, assessed) national standards when the (voluntary) national curricular frameworks already in place turned into ideological battle zones. No matter who writes them, they will be expensive, monolithic, and linked to increased test-driven accountability, as they yield the huge data sets that test makers and data analysts are craving. I think we are aligned on the “moral imperative” issue– creating national standards, tests, and comparison models will not get us closer to a better educated workforce or citizenry. Some problems can’t be solved by more standardized goals and data.
Like you, I very much appreciate the national standards created for my disciplinary area–the arts. I use them productively and led the charge to adapt them as Music and Art benchmarks in our district curriculum. That was before NCLB, of course–after which, nobody cared about arts curricula because the focus was on reading and math and making AYP.
I fully agree that standards must be useful across all kinds of schools. I teach in a small town, where we get the lowest per-pupil allotment in the entire state. What works for me doesn’t work elsewhere. I recently wrote a three-blog series on National Standards at Teacher in a Strange Land you might like to read: http://teacherleaders.typepad.com/teacher_in_a_strange_land/
I ended the last blog with this line:
In a large system, it’s easier to make everyone do the same thing, a principle well-known to anyone who’s ever been in the military–or the criminal justice system. Easier, but not necessarily better.
I don’t follow the NEA closely, but given that I first started reading Dan Willingham in the AFT’s quarterly, I find Finn’s view that “unions = 21st century skills” a bit shallow.
Some state education departments have done a good job with standards. Is it hopeless to believe that the Dept of Education could do the same? Do we need the education version of NIST?
In fairness to Checker Finn, he did draw a distinction between his reaction to the AFT’s and NEA’s embrace of national standards:
“It felt okay when Randi Weingarten came out for national standards, considering that the American Federation of Teachers’ positions on standards and curriculum (though not assessment and accountability) have been sound–sometimes downright inspiring–since Al Shanker’s day. But I cannot be the only person whose heart sank when Dennis Van Roekel announced that the National Education Association was also joining the “partnership” previously consisting of governors, state school chiefs, Achieve, the Hunt Institute, and a couple of other serious groups. What really formed icicles on my toes was his declaration that this move is perfectly compatible with the NEA’s adoration of “21st Century skills” and “comprehensive” standards that include “accountability for child well-being, facilities and supplies.” (Who else remembers the brouhaha over “opportunity to learn standards” in the early ‘90s?)”
John Thompson wrote:
And even though I can work with Finn on this (and many other) issue, he doesn’t sound like he really wants the assistance of teachers.
I guess this is where Checker Finn loses me. I just don’t see how you get education reform — particularly curriculum reform — if you’re disappointed when the largest teacher organization starts sounding like they (at least sort of) support your position.
Rachel,
I believe Finn’s reference to “teachers” may have been code for the educational establishment. These were the folks in charge of our schools prior to A Nation At Risk a quarter century ago. There was no plan – anywhere, as to what to do or when to do it. Our schools were directionless, other than the textbooks they adopted or the local school board’s edicts. That proved a real successful now didn’t it. A hundred thousand school districts going in a million different directions and no one could figure out why US TIMSS scores weren’t at the top rung of the ladder. Talk about pell-mell hysteria! Every November, every elementary school teacher in America taught their own little homemade unit on the first Thanksgiving. From coast to coast ten year olds were Squantoed and Samoseted to death. No Plan, no direction, no sense. No, I’ll go farther – it was an embarrassment. That’s just one example of the redundancies and/or omissions left at the schoolhouse gate’s doorstep thanks to our educational establishment pre-1983. Thank goodness Hirsch and others came along with some kind of a rational plan. Thank goodness!
I generally apologize for one of these outbursts because they usually shock most people, especially teachers. Rachel, nothing personal intended here at all towards you. Just the facts Mam, just the facts.
Nancy,
Nancy, my point in regard to you was supposed to be the humorous one that its hard for me to quote Reagan. So scratch that, you take the adult road and I’ll now pretend I never mentioned Reagan. But I’ll check out your link this afternoon. (by the way, I’ve got a new Saturday post on a similar ongoing issue at thisweekineducation.com.)
I’m willing to support the Standards that come out of the process. Its not my not issue, and I want people to listen to me issues that I know.
Rachel makes my point better than I did. Its hard to evaluate some peoples’ agendas because some seem to be more interesting in fighting than anything else.
Paul –
I agree about the Thanksgiving units — I knew the Thanksgiving mythology backwards and forwards by the time I left elementary school.
However, the difficulty with linking “teachers” to the pre-1983 world is that many of them were in grade school in 1983. And I don’t actually think “teachers” are the part of the education establishment most enamored of local control. My experience is that they are at least as suspicious of their local school board as they are of state and federal agencies.
In the end, as John mentions, politics is likely to be the real impediment to national standards unless standards are overseen by a body at least somewhat insulated from a sound-bite political process. Much as I think the concept of national standards is reasonable, I’m a little concerned about what the biology standards might end up looking like — less concerned than I would have been a year ago, but still concerned.
(Raising hand.) I remember opportunity to learn standards. And–speaking of Reagan–I also remember 1983 and the Nation at Risk report–and many subsequent conversations with my teaching colleagues, excited (and surprised) that an administration which originally tried to excise the Secretary of Education position eventually came out with a challenge to raise educational focus and standards across the nation.
The prevailing norm at my school was that (despite the inflammatory, rising-tide rhetoric) any effort toward making America a nation where people valued their free public education more was a good one. I never heard a single teacher push back against the need to ratchet up achievement goals–and I had been in the classroom since 1974. Of course, lots of folks thought that an intense focus on improving education systems would be accompanied by judicious redirection of resources–training, materials, facilities. But no. Someone, somewhere would “raise standards,” and we would just have to work harder.
In the end, it turned out that it was just the next phase in the ongoing labor/management struggle, another way to position teachers (an enormous, potentially powerful political constituency) as technical workers, subject to the direction of “experts.”
John and Rachel are both right. Sometimes, it’s only about fighting and winning–and defining teachers’ work while rejecting input from teachers would be ludicrous.
BTW, Paul, the first TIMMS report came out in the mid-90s, more than a decade after your miracle cure fixed public schools.
Rachel,
Teachers as part of the educational establishment having been guilty in the eyes of folks like Checker Finn via guilt through association. The point I was trying to make was that teachers, as part of the educational establishment, along with administration, school boards, unions, education schools and teacher colleges, were in charge of the nation’s schools prior to 1983 and as I said our schools were directionless and an embarrassment. And they were. So Finn, et al, haven’t wanted to include any of the aforementioned in the education reform dialogue because of their purported past practices.
As a teacher, I saw many of the problems in our schools before 83 and since. I concurred with the outliers. Our schools were a joke. No plan, no direction, no system of accountability. Just give us more “resources.” That, of course, is the establishment’s word for more money.
That’s when the business community prompted state and federal lawmakers to finally do something about the deplorable condition of our public school system and that’s why and when education reform was initiated. Standards were put in place with corresponding assessments all in the name of accountability. As well, fiscal reforms were enacted in an attempt to minimize the financial disparities between poor and wealthy districts.
Today’s teachers are being castigated for the sins of their predecessors. The parties controlling schools today believe if they invite teachers back into the dialogue it will be same old same old. They would know going into the discussion of all the “concerns” the educational establishment (teachers) would be bringing to the table. Based on my three and a half decades of experience in public education, those outliers would be correct.